


If I Must With Thee Dwell

by kahootqueen69



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It of Sorts, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentions of Injuries, Mentions of Suicide, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Requited Unrequited Love, Sad with a Happy Ending, it's in the way they act, of sorts, of sorts?? i guess??, theterrorbingo 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27424276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahootqueen69/pseuds/kahootqueen69
Summary: James Fitzjames dies in the company of the one that matters most, and follows him even in death.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31
Collections: The Terror Bingo, The Terror Bingo (2020)





	If I Must With Thee Dwell

**Author's Note:**

> For The Terror Bingo // square filled: _You are alone now_
> 
> Rated T for descriptions of injuries, but they're really not that descriptive (more like a statement of it), so I don't think an M rating is necessary. Please leave a comment or message me on Tumblr (see end notes) if you'd like it to be rated M, though, and I'll change it!

It hadn’t burned, like he had expected it to. It had felt… warm.

When the liquid poured down his throat, shutting his vital organs down one by one as Francis looked on and massaged his thorax, held his hand and stayed with him until it would be over, looking so broken and crushed under the weight he carried, he’d felt at peace, even. It didn’t burn and he didn’t feel it eat away at his insides as it killed him, gradually, in the company of the only person that had really, fully known him as he was and had been. Perhaps it wasn’t the death he’d imagined for himself — it wasn’t graceful or heroic like he had always thought his death would be, or should be — but it was not half so bad. It was peaceful. He was at peace.

He didn’t feel it when the strength left his hand that had been clutching at Francis’ shirtsleeve, didn’t feel it when his last breath left his lungs, as much as he didn’t feel it when Francis’ fist curled into his shirtfront, ruined and smudged with dirt, blood and sweat. He only realised it had happened when a strangled sob bubbled forth over Francis’ lips. He sounded like a wounded animal, trapped in his burdens and grief as he sat hunched over James’ unmoving body.

It was heart-breaking to hear, and it startled him out of the calm that had settled over him.

It wasn’t half as surprising to find that he was still here — here with Francis, here in this sick-tent that had been his up until a second ago and would now be someone else’s, here in the Arctic — wearing the familiar cut of his Navy-issued greatcoat, the wool washed clean of the cuts and grime and the mistakes they’d made along the way, the buttons neatly polished and shining in the dim lamplight. He didn’t feel the comfortable weight of it on his shoulders and around his waist, but he felt warm again in it, and that was a comfort he hadn’t thought he’d know again.

He wanted to call his name, let him know that he was still here, still with him and that he was alright now, and would remain so for as long as they were yet given, but knew better than to do so — than to cause him more hurt than he was already in.

So instead, he sat with him and watched as Francis wiped furiously at his eyes and undressed the body that was once his, and got him cleaned and ready as much as he could for something that resembled a burial in this barren land.

# ________

  


He had walked with Francis as he led the men farther south. A bright side of being dead was that he no longer grew tired or felt the hunger gnawing at his stomach as it did before.

As the men got sicker and more and more got put up in a sick-tent, he’d tried to be there for them went their moment came to pass. Some were grateful and some were surprised, most of them asked questions to how they came to be here but not _here_ , and most thanked him and went their own way, searching. One day, Blanky came walking back into camp and heartily clapped James on his shoulder, telling him he’d found the Passage — his job was done.

But not all stayed with him long enough to choose their fate, and some never rose at all. He did wonder what was to become of them.

He’d followed Francis with a sickening feeling when they fell for Hickey’s trap, followed him into the mutineers’ camp where they were just as miserable as the rest of them, where a hopeless shell of the man that was once the lively and kind-hearted Goodsir had patched Francis up and then killed himself to help his captain.

James had been there for him, too.

He had seen first-hand how Hickey chained his prisoners — for that was what they all were, really; not partners in crime, or in any way equals — to the boat-turned-sledge they’d stolen and forced them, step by heavy step, to pull it and him with them like Sir John Ross on Fury Beach, and he had scolded and hexed him for it even though he had no expectations of it doing any good. He had witnessed how Hickey gruesomely cut out his own tongue and offered it up for the Tuunbaq — who, with, a twisted sense of morality at first, he had come to understand not as a vicious beast that murdered his crew, but as a protector of the lands they should not have come to in the first place.

And as Francis had lain there, unconscious on the cold, hard ground, he’d sat with him as he had sat with the other unfortunate souls the unforgiving land had claimed, ready to be there for him, too, when the time came. Except instead, Silna — or Lady Silence, as he had known her in his time with them — had come, and took him with her.

So, waiting for Francis to wake up, he followed Silna. And then, he followed them both.

Even though he hadn’t spoken to Francis in the time he’d been with him, he had no words of comfort now as they walked through the wind-swept and sun-bleached camps where the remainders of those who had set out for rescue were left to rot and disappear — no soft-spoken encouragement or kind words of consolation for the man who had lost everything and everyone, and now had to witness the results the brutal fates they had suffered. He had sat with both Lt. Little and Francis, mourned with them as they mourned for the rest of the men and mourned with Francis as he mourned the last man standing of his crew that was once theirs, and helped the Lieutenant on his way.

And now, as he stood behind Francis while he sat in front of the fishing hole, he felt more heartbroken than he had when seeing him suffer on the journey that led them here — for here, now, he suffered the weight of guilt and the ghosts he carried with him more than when he grieved the loss of another man. Though it had been some years, he looked older than time was responsible for, and it was heart-breaking to see him like this — broken, with no real will to live but to suffer for what he thought was his fault.

James hadn’t said a word to him after he died, for Francis’ sake, but he felt that strange pulling at his heart again that had made so much sense once he admitted to himself the nature of it, when he was still living.

“I am sorry,” James said, “that you are alone now.”

He wasn’t sure if Francis could hear him. Of course he’d heard stories of people seeing their loved ones that had passed — if you’d ever been to a party, you were sure to have heard at least one retelling of such stories — but he’d always thought they were rubbish, up until he became one himself, naturally. They also said nothing of speaking to them.

Francis didn’t move, nor did he speak. He couldn’t hear him, then.

Sighing, he sat down next to Francis with the tails of his coat under him — an old habit to keep out the cold, which he had no need for now but hadn’t quite left his system yet — and looked at the hole in front of them, the water that flowed under the ice as black as the night, but with no stars.

“I miss your daft smile,” he stated simply, to no one in particular but himself, and in the faraway hope Francis might hear him, anyway.

What a foolish thing that was to do, and something so typical of and ingrained in the living that he had taken it with him, even in death.

Francis shifted uncomfortably. “Not now, James. Please.”

James turned, shocked. “You can hear me?” he asked incredulously.

“Hear you—” as Francis said it, he paused and looked sideways, towards _him_ — “and see you.” English sounded a little off on his tongue, now, which was only natural after solely speaking Inuktitut for so long.

“What?” His throat convulsed as it seized up and closed off, making him feel like speech was near impossible. “How—How long?”

“Since that day.”

“What?” James’ voice broke on the word. “You—Why didn’t you say something?”

“Why didn’t _you_?” Francis choked out. Turning his eyes downward, he looked back towards the fishing hole. “I couldn’t bear it.”

“Did the others—”

“No,” Francis interrupted, shaking his head. He sighed. “I merely thought I was going mad—Until I saw Blanky again.” A bitter, mirthless chuckle left his lips before he said, “I thought he’d killed it and walked all the way back. The crazy old fool would do it, too.”

James surprised both Francis and himself when a laugh bubbled forth. “I wouldn’t dare put it past him.” He watched as a hesitant but earnest grin pulled at a corner of Francis’ mouth. It warmed him more than any fire could, even now when he was always warm. “There it is.”

“You sound like an old coot. It’s unbecoming of you, James,” Francis jived with an even brighter grin. His tooth gap was nearly on display.

“I merely appreciate the things I once took for granted. Suppose that is something dying will do to you.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words rolled over his tongue and Francis’ grin turned into a frown.

He sighed, and frowned. “Why are you doing this, Francis? Why not go back to England with Ross when he found the camp—Renew your suit with Miss Cracroft?”

Francis scoffed, his frown turning bitter. “I failed, James. I failed all of you—Everyone dead, but me.” The arm of which he’d lost his hand twitched. When he next spoke again, his voice was hardly more than a rough whisper. “This is my penance.”

“Come now, surely you don’t think you have to undergo some kind of punishment?”

The look Francis gave him, guilt and grief and the burden of everything still on his shoulders, even now, so clearly displayed in the lines on his face, told him enough.

“Christ, Francis,” James said, unbelieving. “You say you have seen me ever since the day I died—Surely, then, you know I was with you when others passed in front of you.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then you also know that I was with _them_ when they passed, yes?”

“James, I don’t see—”

“God’s sake, Francis! Everyone— _Everyone_ , I tell you—was grateful. Each and every one of them thanked me, and you, for getting them this far, for giving them hope when there was none to be found, until the very end! You were—”

“Stop it, James! Stop it!” Francis shouted, his voice trembling over the plains of the ice that stretched out in every direction.

The little Inuit child that, up to now, had been sleeping peacefully tucked up to Francis’ side now started to fuss, threatening to wake up.

“Please,” Francis begged him, voice lowered to a whisper in order not to rouse the blessed thing.

James felt his heart break once more for him. He couldn’t even begin to fathom how Francis could think of himself so lowly, not when every soul he’d been with had told him quite the opposite—had praised him.

“May I try something?” he asked, just as softly — hesitantly.

He took Francis’ long silence and pleading bright blue eyes as a _yes_ , and took one of his fingerless gloves off, and reached out. He willed with all his might for it to work — to _please_ let it work, for if all else was possible surely this could be too — and laid his hand on top of Francis’ that held the harpoon.

Judging by Francis’ shocked expression and large eyes, it did. At least partially.

James couldn’t help the foolish smile that crept across his face. “Do you feel that?”

“What are you—How are you—” Francis stammered, looking up at him with a slack jaw. His eyes seemed near the point of overflowing.

“What does it feel like?”

“Like… Like warmth—Like—” Francis swallowed harshly— “like a hundred souls in one—Like… love.”

The smile on James’ face grew. So it _did_ work. Good.

“You think of that, Francis Crozier. You think of that and for the love of Christ you talk to me, because if you ever think of yourself so lowly or unworthy again by God I am here and I will make you know suffering like you never have before.”

After looking at him with a dazed expression for a long moment, Francis actually _grinned_. “With what? Another of your great, gilded stories?”

“Perhaps—” James grins— “I just might.”

“I shall pester you with my most self-deprecating thoughts, then—I should like to hear your stories more often these days.”

“Oh, I’ll be there to tell them.”

Even with their banter as easy-going as it had been, James looked on as Francis’ smile slowly drooped back into a shadow of itself.

“I beg of you, Francis,” he pleaded, his hand still on Francis’, “do not get lost in your melancholy. I have watched you with these people, here, and they have accepted you into their lives and into their hearts. There is a place for you here. The children—” he nodded towards the little ball of Inuit furs tucked up to Francis’ side— “they love you, Francis. Think of them when you feel alone or, for whatever reason, cannot talk to me—and I will be there right beside you for whatever time I am given to do so yet.”

Francis looked at him for a long time, searching his face and his eyes for any sign that he wasn’t real, wasn’t really here with him — for a sign that he _was_ losing his marbles.

He closed his eyes and sighed.

“Alright,” he said after a pause that seemed to stretch into minutes — hours — and nodded. This time when he opened his eyes again, his gaze wasn’t hesitant or unsure, but determined. “Alright,” he repeated.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a line taken from the poem _To Solitude_ by John Keats.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/kahootqueen69) :)


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